When In Doubt and Not in the Mood to Photoblog, Talk about Wambach

"Talk" here means, of course, "fling up a link to a real journalist and call it a day." The inimitable Andrea Canales discusses Wombat's conference call today talking about her surgery and outlook on rehab and the team's prospects in the Olympics without her. I am grudgingly, slowly, grindingly swinging toward maybe dialing my opinion of her back up a couple notches with every instance of remarkable chin-upness she's displayed since the second after the nasty double-bone break last Wednesday.

Abby is asked why she didn't scream in pain upon the break. She says she hasn't seen the hit. She says she thinks her experience and competitiveness helped. She didn't want to negatively affect the team by making a scene. She wanted to set an example for her teammates...

She plans to watch the games with other injured players. She intends to grow from this experience. "There's not question in my mind whether or not I'm going to make a comeback - it's just a matter of time. I want to come back and be great again." Abby says she's ready for the hard work that will involve. She's aware of her responsibility as a role model in dealing with challenges and wants to be inspired by that. She wants to show kids how to react when things get tough. She vows to come back...

When she's asked to name three players who people should look out for, Abby says she can name 18.

Not bad, not bad at all.

After watching the replay of the game last night, I am increasingly impressed with Amy Rodriguez' speed and work rate. She is desire for the ball embodied and whizzing around the field on a blur of legs. Lauren Cheney has been brought up as Wambach's replacement on the front line; watching the two of them together is going to be very interesting. And hopefully will create unanticipated problems for the opposition.

Updated: the link to the audio of the conference call is up at US Soccer.